Fault Lines
by The Moss Stomper
Summary: Maybe Reno should feel something as he watches that patchwork of matchbox shacks down below, but he doesn't. He is hollow, as if Tseng has scooped out his insides with that simple order.
1. Down in Flames

**A/N**: Rated M for terrible coping mechanisms, implied substance abuse, violence, and swearing.

* * *

**1\. Down in Flames**

* * *

Reno stands at the very edge of the pillar's maintenance platform, cigarette pinched between his fingers. Maybe he should feel something as he watches that patchwork of matchbox shacks down below, but he doesn't. He is hollow, as if Tseng has scooped out his insides with that simple order.

Small mercies. Reno has learned to grab them where he can, because he sure doesn't have any big ones waiting for him at the end.

They joke about it all the time. That's the part his brain is stuck on, replaying his dumb remarks again and again like a glitch in the system.

_Look at that guy, mooning over the waitress. The plate could fall on his head and he wouldn't even notice._

A joke, that's all it is. Everyone knows it's a joke, because everyone knows it can never happen.

But like all jokes, it holds that dark kernel of truth that makes everyone squirm deep inside. It's not that they think it's impossible. They just won't let themselves believe it will happen. They can't, because no one can live like that.

Soon, a good chunk of them won't have to. Small mercies.

A startled shout rings out a level below him. A shot rings out, then another. More shouts, more gunfire.

Reno takes a step back from the railing. Wouldn't do to get hit by a stray bullet while he's waiting. The pillar's maintenance platform has to remain under Shinra's control. Wouldn't do for someone to blunder in and start poking around before the show starts, after all. Might spoil the fireworks.

Only a stub remains of Reno's cigarette. He reaches out across the railing, his hand hovering over the edge. Slowly, he parts his fingers. His cigarette slips through them; as it falls the wind catches it, whisks it away. The end still glows, drawing a faint golden trail until it vanishes into the gloom.

Not much of a fire code down there. Plenty of spilt fuel has trickled down from above over the years. Chemicals, too, and more reactor waste than is ever mentioned in official reports; all of it mixing into an unholy flammable cocktail that has seeped into the ground, into the brick and the wood and the cardboard of countless makeshift houses. A spark in the wrong place is all it would take.

Reno scoffs at himself. As if it matters now.

Hell, let it burn. Might clear some of those poor bastards out of there before it all comes crashing down. It's not like they're going to get any other warning.

Up above, it's a different story. Nothing new about that, only this time it wasn't planned that way. Somebody blabbed, which led to to Shinra personnel staging a haphazard evacuation of their families. Reno isn't too concerned; it was a known risk, and a likely one at that. They will take care of it later; him or Rude, or maybe even Tseng. Now that there's only three of them left, even the boss might have to get his hands dirty.

Later, though. They have other business to attend to first. Reno frowns and checks his watch. Business that should have been underway half an hour ago, if anyone were to bother asking his opinion.

A new sound joins the cacophony below: the angry smattering of automatic gunfire. Reno frowns. Cautiously, he inches toward the edge of the platform for a peek. Through the latticework of stairs that curl down the pillar, he sees a newcomer on a rampage.

Reno recognizes him: Barret Wallace, a tank of a man who calls himself the leader of AVALANCHE. It's only fitting that Wallace should be the man to climb the pillar in defiance of his impending demise, Reno muses as he watches him mow down Shinra's infantry. If it weren't for Wallace and his terrorists, Reno wouldn't be standing on this platform.

Higher and higher Wallace climbs, barking obscenities, peppering Shinra's soldiers full of holes. Does he realize, Reno wonders, that the only way off this platform is to go down with it?

Far below Wallace, all the way down on the cold ground, Reno spies two more of the man's fellow terrorists, running toward the base of the pillar. Everyone else, though, is running away.

Small mercies. AVALANCHE's full crew would take him down in seconds, but three? Reno can slow down three.

* * *

After another circle around the helicopter, Rude leans back against the cockpit door. He crosses his arms over his chest, balls his hands into tight fists at his armpits. The nip in the air makes him want to retreat into the warmth of the cockpit.

There's a limit to what he can see from there, though. Too risky, this close to the slums.

Rude checks his watch. Twelve minutes, since Tseng climbed out of the helicopter and headed for the Gainsborough house. Probably still en route.

A whispering crowd has gathered at the chainlink fence that separates Midgar from the badlands, drawn there by the novelty of a helicopter parked within easy view. As far as Rude is concerned, they can point and stare all they want as long as they stay on the other side of the gate.

And as long as they let Tseng through, once he returns with his target. The flower girl might have friends among the gawkers. Rude can only hope none of them ran ahead of Tseng to warn her.

As he scans the onlookers, he runs through a few scenarios for crowd control in his head. Best to be prepared. There's too many unknown factors as it is. They've had too little time to plan, too little time to think things through.

Though maybe that is a blessing in disguise. Tonight, Rude prefers not to think too hard about the consequences of their orders.

The chill nips at his bald scalp, reminding him that it's already December. Easy to forget when the snow has yet to arrive. What a strange winter. What a strange _year_. Never before has Rude had so many brushes with death.

Most of them brought down on his head by the company he works for.

Rude straightens up for another patrol around the helicopter. A strange year, that's for sure. Maybe that's why he's having a hard time keeping track of the days and weeks and months. It all feels unreal.

And none of it feels more unreal than the task that lies ahead today.

Days ago – _weeks? months?_ – Rude and his fellow Turks teamed up with Shinra's enemies to save the world. Today, on company orders, they will end it for a whole sector of Midgar's population. A poetic man might have something to say about that.

Rude is not a poetic man.

He glances at his watch. Sixteen minutes.

His headset crackles to life.

_"Hey, buddy."_

Reno's voice is different. It makes the back of Rude's neck prickle.

_"Got the girl yet?"_ Reno asks.

"Tseng's on it. Why?"

_"I got company."_

"AVALANCHE?"

Reno chuckles darkly. _"'Course it is."_

Rude's fists tighten. Seven minutes minimum, from takeoff to the Sector 7 platform. For at least seven minutes, Reno has to fend off multiple foes, alone.

_"I'll stall if I can," _Reno continues,_ "but chances are I gotta make my move early or I ain't gonna be making one at all. Tell Tseng to haul ass, will ya?"_

"Yeah." Rude strides around the nose of the helicopter and stares down along the road to the Gainsborough house, but he can't spot a dark suit among the people coming in his direction.

"Hold on," he adds, checking his watch. Eighteen minutes since Tseng's departure. "We're on our way."

They will be on their way, that much is true. Rude fervently hopes they won't be too late.

* * *

There's three of them – the big guy with the gun arm, the bartender with the boobs, the SOLDIER wannabe with the ridiculous sword – and they all know how to fight. Reno doesn't need to win, though. He just needs to slow them down. Behind him, the timer is ticking down.

He's not doing too badly, considering how heavy the odds are stacked against him, but he won't be standing forever. The constant assault from three directions is wearing him down fast. His left side twinges with every move, where that sword caught him below his ribs. Blood keeps trickling down his arm, drips from his fingers. His nose is bleeding too, probably broken.

_Tick tock_.

How much left? Minutes, Reno hopes and dreads. He has two ways off this platform – a helicopter ride or a long drop to the bottom – and there's no sign of the helicopter yet. He can't check Rude's status; the fist that broke his nose knocked out his earpiece too.

_They aren't coming._ Come in ten or don't come at all; that had been his last message to Rude. _They decided it ain't worth the risk._

The thought traps Reno's breath in his throat.

_No_. They're coming, they have to. Just a few more minutes. He can hold out a few more minutes.

Strife swings low, aiming at his legs. Reno leaps over the massive sword, rolls and jabs his mag rod into the back of Strife's thigh. In a flash of blue light Strife drops to the ground, his muscles locked tight and his face clenched in agony.

The shock is enough to knock any normal human out cold, but Reno knows he will get up again, and soon. Strife may be no SOLDIER, but he sure seems to be the same breed of freak as them, glowing eyes and all.

As Reno skips out of Strife's reach, the Lockhart woman barrels out of nowhere with a kick at his head. Reno ducks in the nick of time, but the heel of her boot clips his shoulder and sends him stumbling sideways.

He stays on his feet, but barely. His heart is pounding in his throat and the mag rod grows heavier in his hand with every swing and feint. Reno can't win this fight, he knew that going in. At this rate, though, it looks like he won't be surviving it either.

No sooner has Reno thought it than he hears the sound he's been silently begging for: the steady chop of a helicopter slicing the air. He leaps back and rolls behind the central pillar, then flicks a Pyramid at Strife, encasing him in a prison of glowing light. These assholes have figured out the trick of it by now, but Reno only needs a distraction, a few precious seconds to make the jump. Flattened against the pillar, he twists his head, trying to pinpoint the direction of the chopper over AVALANCHE's shouting.

_"Think you can hide from me, motherfucker?"_

Wallace rounds the pillar, gun arm raised, barrels spinning into a whine. Reno pushes off the wall and breaks into a sprint, but it's already too late. Fast as he is, he can't outrun a bullet. He feints to the left just as Wallace's gun spits its first hail of rounds. Reno feels them punch a jagged line along the right of his spine; three, maybe four. The impact sends him flying, hurtling through the air. A ragged cry tears from his throat as he lands shoulder first, still spinning, rolling toward the edge of the platform.

_This is it_. The thought surfaces through the blood-red agony with surprising clarity. _Game over._

Wallace strides up to him, gun arm at the ready, spinning up for one final salvo. Reno wills his body to move, but it's too beaten, too broken. He coughs wetly; his blood spatters onto the metal. All he can do now is watch his death coming. What a fucking pathetic way go.

Wallace pauses, frowns as he looks up, and Reno remembers that the rhythmic chop that thunders in his ears isn't just his panicking heart. That spark of hope animates his weary limbs, forces him up off the deck. He trembles on all fours right at the edge, stares down into the terrifying drop to the slums. The sleek, black Shinra helicopter is swooping in close; but not close enough, not yet. Not for his beaten, broken body.

Behind him, he hears Wallace yell. Stay or fall; either way, Reno's dead.

Reno coils every ounce that remains of his strength, braces his feet beneath him, and with a roar he throws himself off. The wind tears at his jacket, trying to drag him down into oblivion. Wallace howls at his back, spewing bullets into the air as the door of the helicopter rushes up to meet him.

Reno makes it.

He lands badly, feels the snap and crunch of bone. There ought to be pain, he thinks hazily, and there _is_, so much that he can't _breathe_, but it's from everything else, not his leg. Lost, like a gasp in a storm.

Everything has gone blurry. No matter how much he blinks, his eyes won't focus.

He hears the roar of the explosion; a heartbeat later the helicopter rocks with the violence of it. He rolls across the floor like a helpless doll, slams into something hard. He barely notices, because an unholy screeching noise is clawing his skull open. It's the sound of nightmares. It's the shriek of a million lost souls, thirsty for his blood.

_It's screaming_. The thought pierces his lurid haze like a bullet to the brain. _The plate is screaming_.

The blur shifts, coalesces into a face. Tseng's face, wild and raging and _alive_ in a way that Reno has rarely seen. He tries to blink the tears from his eyes, so he can get a better look at this strange and unsettling miracle, but the tears are stubborn. No matter how he fights them, they keep coming. His blinking slows, grows too sluggish to keep them at bay.

"Fight, damn you!" Tseng spits in his face. His voice sounds distant, an echo from miles away.

_Sorry, boss man. Looks like you're stuck with the dirty work yourself._

None of it makes it to Reno's lips, which are too cold and numb to move. Tseng's mouth is moving, but all Reno hears is noise. It's all just noise.

_Could be worse_, he thinks as he drifts into the dark. _Could've been alone._

* * *

Reno is out of it for days, adrift on a tide of whatever it is they're pumping into him. How many days, he doesn't bother to ask. Whatever the number is, he already knows the answer. _Not enough._

They had brought him back to HQ, patched him up in Shinra's private clinic. It's where he lies now, listening to the moans and cries of other patients around him. The walls of his private room muffle most of it, but not enough. Not when there's so many of them.

It isn't hard to guess what put them there.

_Could be worse_; that's what he had thought as it all went dark. He should have known it wouldn't be that easy.

Reno turns, reaching for the bedside table, swearing under his breath all the while. They've switched his pain medication to a couple of pills every few hours, which is only enough as long as he stays still. He wonders if that's Tseng's doing. Maybe the guy instructed the medical staff to keep Reno off the good stuff, worried he'll fall back into his old, bad habits.

Or maybe Tseng just wants to make sure Reno stays put for once. His leg is in a cast; according to the nurse on the morning shift the knee is practically jelly, riddled with splintered bone. The doctors didn't get around to dealing with it in the first rounds of healing, she told him; keeping him alive was the priority. They'll fix it later, she promised, once his innards are back to what they're supposed to be.

Reno isn't so sure about that. Plenty of other emergency cases to attend to now, after all.

His teeth clamped tight against the pain, Reno drags out the top drawer of the bedside table. There wasn't much left of his suit after the staff cut it off him. Everything they discovered in the pockets, they put in the drawer. Turk ID, wallet, goggles. A slim leather case that holds his lockpicks. A lighter, next to a bent pack of cigarettes. No weapons. Tseng must have taken them, or maybe Rude.

They've never done that before.

A sudden rage spears through the haze of medication. Rage at their meddling, rage at Shinra for sending him to that plate in the first place. At AVALANCHE for putting him into hospital in such a fucked-up state, at the useless doctors for not fucking fixing him already. Rage at fucking _everything_.

Reno snatches up his cigarettes and his lighter. So they think taking away his weapons will keep him from doing something stupid? They can damned well think again.

Gritting his teeth, Reno forces his protesting body into a sitting position. His vision swims. He gropes blindly for the bed's railing, finds it, clings to it until the world stops spinning.

_See?_ he thinks with manic glee. _Being stupid already._

Because sitting up is definitely stupid. Moving at all is stupid, because his knee isn't the only injury that still needs attention. Nobody has given him the laundry list yet, but he's been doing this long enough that he can recognize the signs. The stabbing pain on the left side of his chest has to be a cracked rib or several. If he had to hazard a guess about the dull ache in his lower back, he would say kidneys. The dizziness; well, blood loss will do that to a guy. Must have taken the doctors a while to plug all the holes.

Reno taps out a cigarette into his palm. As he wedges it between his lips, it occurs to him that the cravings haven't kicked in yet. Maybe the doctors hid a nicotine patch on him, somewhere out of reach.

It isn't just a physical need, though. It's the ceremony of lighting up, of taking that first drag and holding his breath for a second, of savoring the moment with his eyes shut.

It doesn't do much to cool his anger, though.

Now that he's sitting up, Reno has a better view of the room. The wheelchair they'd used to cart him to the x-ray room is still parked by the door. They've taken away the machinery he was plugged into when he first woke up; all that's left is an IV stand beside the bed, with a thin tube that snakes into the back of his hand. Next to the stand, a trash bin is pushed up to the bed. Someone has left a bunch of tissues in there, all wadded up.

He eyes the rumpled mound of paper as he fills his lungs with smoke. If his cigarette falls in and starts a fire, he'll be the first to go.

Reno stretches out his arm, lets his hand hover over the bin.

_An idiot until the end_, they'll say at his funeral. _Premium grade-A dumbass_.

Slowly, he parts his fingers. The cigarette slips from his hold and disappears into the bin. A heartbeat later, the flames lick up. They devour everything inside in seconds and lap at the edges, hungry for more.

Reno smiles.


	2. The Kindness of Strangers

**A/N**: This second and last chapter expands on some early events in _The Unwelcome Guest_. It's not necessary to read that story first, but it does give some context as to what is going on here.

On the other hand, if you read this first and want more, you know where to find it. ;)

(This chapter does contain some minor spoilers for the early chapters of _The Unwelcome Guest_, just FYI.)

* * *

**2\. The Kindness of Strangers**

* * *

Reno jerks awake with a gasp. His hospital pajamas cling to his body, damp with sweat.

It's not the first nightmare he's had. The ones he remember all take him to the same place: that fucking plate, dragging him down with it, kicking and screaming.

Reno rubs his face with an unsteady hand. He needs something to take the edge off. Just a little bit. Can't smoke; they took away his lighter and cigarettes. Tseng was present while the nurse ranted about the evils of smoking in hospitals, looking so damned disappointed it made Reno want to dunk his head into the still-smouldering bin. When Rude dropped by a little later, neither of them even mentioned it. In some ways, that was even worse. Just more fucking pretending that nothing was wrong.

Reno may have lost his cigarettes, but he _is_ in a clinic. Clinics have pills. _All kinds_ of pills. Asking the nurses is pointless though, because they only give him things that put him to sleep. Returning to his nightmares is the last thing Reno wants right now. What he wants is to fucking _forget_.

A wheelchair sits parked by the door. Maybe they think it's too far for a guy with broken ribs and only one functioning leg. What _Reno_ thinks is that if he stays in this room one second longer, his head will fucking burst. Gritting his teeth, he pulls out the needle of his IV. He grabs his Turk ID and his lockpicks from the drawer, then sets out on a slow, grueling crawl to freedom.

By the time he slumps into the wheelchair's seat, he's completely drenched by sweat. His arms are shaking, legs too. Every muscle in his beaten body is utterly drained. He lets his head thump against the wall and closes his eyes.

With a start Reno returns to the present, right from the brink of sleep. Mumbling a curse, he kneads his eyelids. Dragging himself all the way across the floor just to fall asleep again? What a fucking waste.

As Reno wills some life into his limbs, he thinks through his self-assigned mission. Searching the emergency ward is a bad idea. Every bed is full, every nurse and doctor on high alert. There are other parts of HQ Reno can trawl in peace, though; places that ought to have what he needs. The psych ward, for example. That place stocks all kinds of hardcore shit.

Reno cracks the door open for a peek. The room outside is many times large than his own, split into partitions by drapes drawn around hospital beds for some measure of privacy. More beds are pushed up against the wall at the back, all of them occupied. The main lights have been turned off for the night, but quiet moans and wails keep the room uneasy.

Clenching his jaw, Reno shuts out the cries and slips into the focus that has served him well as a Turk. An exit, that's all that matters. Through the gap in his door, he can see half of another one, illuminated by the exit sign above it. It's one of the double doors to the front desk; at this hour, it ought to be unmanned.

Reno wedges his wheelchair into the doorway of his room, pushing the door open wider. After a quick look around to make sure the coast is clear, he wheels toward the exit.

A few minutes later, the elevator doors slide open upon the locked entrance to the psych ward. No front desk here; the patients locked away behind these doors are meant to be forgotten.

Reno's Turk ID opens those doors. The main lights are off here too, but the short corridor beyond the entrance is lit by sparse, dim lights sunk into the floor along the walls. The observation window on his right is dark; the night staff must be holed up somewhere else.

The stump of a hallway ends in a T-intersection. Reno peers down each direction, but they both look the same to him. He hasn't had much business in this part of HQ, beyond handing over Shinra's undesirables to the staff from time to time. Not everyone locked away in the ward is a kook – sometimes, the easiest way to deal with Shinra's dirty secrets is to drug them up and hide them away – but by the time those individuals reach the ward, the Turks are done with them. No reason to go back once their brains get turned into chemical mush.

Picking a direction at random, Reno wheels himself down the corridor on his right. The rubber wheels squeak quietly as they roll along the floor; he can only hope it isn't enough to rouse whoever might be on duty at this hour.

Maybe no one is. With the emergency clinic overwhelmed by the rush, they must have pulled in all the medical staff they could find on Shinra's payroll. So many injured to heal.

_So many dead._

Reno sets his jaw and wheels himself faster, ignoring the pangs in his side. So fucking what? It makes his job easier tonight.

The doors on either side of him have peepholes, each one covered by a sliding metal hatch. Nothing that looks like an office or a storage room. Just his luck that he'd pick the corridor that's full of nutjobs.

A tall silhouette looms ahead.

Reno brings the chair to an abrupt halt, holding his breath. _Nowhere to hide_ flashes in his head. _No fucking weapons_.

But the shadow doesn't move. As he squints into the gloom, he realizes the outline is to straight and regular for a human.

A fucking _cabinet_. The breath rushes out of him in a quiet snort of relief.

A cabinet just might hold something of interest.

Reno spins the wheels into a whine, speeding to the cabinet. He maneuvers the wheelchair in front of it, bumping his good knee in the process with a metallic clang, but manages to keep his broken one out of harm's way. He tugs at one of the double doors and feels a twinge of disappointment when it swings open without protest; what he seeks would be kept under lock and key, after all.

He peeks inside nevertheless. Blankets, towels… and a small door that grabs his attention, because it comes with a keyhole.

First though, he needs to reach it. It's in the top half of the cabinet, which means he has to stand. Worse, since the doors swing outward, he can't open them all the way if the wheelchair and his unyielding cast are in the way.

Reno rolls the chair to the side and examines the cabinet with narrowed eyes. As he formulates a plan, he seeks out the lockpick holder he'd tucked between his thighs for safekeeping and clamps it between his teeth, mentally cursing the lack of pockets. Useless fucking hospital pajamas.

Getting to his feet – well, _foot_ – isn't too hard with the aid of the wheelchair. It's finagling himself around the open door that has him worried.

Well, no sense in waiting. His good leg is already trembling from the effort.

With the door handle in a white-knuckled grip, Reno hops up to the edge on one foot. The jumps are small, but pain shoots through his busted knee with each one, and the swinging door makes for terrible support.

Reno makes it to the edge of the door. Clinging to the door handle, he reaches for the second door with his other hand.

He sways. When he tries to correct his balance, the door he's holding onto swings wildly to the opposite side. He fumbles for the door with both hands, grabs hold of it, _hangs_ from it – and to Reno's horror, it gives way. With a surprised shout he falls, and the cabinet follows. He shoves at it in a panic, trying desperately to push it away or himself to the side.

Then he lands, and his vision explodes in white.

Reno can't move, he can't even _breathe_. The pain is everywhere, it's all he knows, all he _is_. The whiteness fades into black…

But not for long. As his lungs remember how to function, the shadows recede to the edges of his vision. Reno stares ahead, blinking the darkness away, until he makes out the faint line where the wall meets the ceiling.

No sign of the cabinet, though.

As he lolls his head to the side, he realizes why. The cabinet has crashed down beside him, its doors splayed open, spewing sheets and pillows across the floor. Some of them have landed on him; as he tries to crawl free, he only manages to get a sheet wrapped around his dumb cast, because a leg in a cast won't bend, his broken ribs won't let _him_ bend down to free it, and the fucking wheelchair keeps getting in his _fucking _way.

"_Fuuuck!_" he yells at the top of his lungs. "You useless fucking piece of _shit!_"

He slams his fist into the wheelchair. When that does nothing, he grabs the bottom of the wheel and _heaves_ – only to curl up into a ball as blinding pain shoots through his shoulder and down his side.

The chair topples and lands on its side with a bang. _Target down_, he thinks to himself. _Mission complete_. He giggles, even as tears of pain pool in his eyes and cold sweat beads on his brow. He keeps on giggling, unable to stop, until another pang across his ribs turns his giggling into a strangled moan.

That fucking cabinet better have some good shit hidden away behind those locked doors, because he needs it more than ever.

Reno makes another attempt to free himself. He rolls sideways, flattens his palms against the floor. As he uses the friction to pull himself forward, he kicks at the sheets with his good leg.

All he accomplishes is a big fat load of nothing. His arms are too weak, his legs dead weight. His head is spinning again. Agony pulses through his ribs with every breath, but he spits out a curse and tries again.

"Hang on," a woman calls, alarmed. "I'll get you up."

As she picks up the wheelchair, Reno groans and goes limp against the floor. He should have guessed one of the nurses would find him first, because when has any fucking thing ever worked out in his favor?

The woman steps around him. She extends a hand, but as soon as their eyes meet, she flinches back. Each frozen in place, they stare at each other. Her face is familiar, but he can't place her. She's no nurse, though. She wears hospital pajamas just like him.

Then it hits him: the interrogation room, one year ago. The intruder with fancy tech and the craziest story anyone had ever pulled on him under questioning.

"Holy shit," he breathes. "FitzEvan?"

With a sheepish grin he asks for her help, but she backs away. She's afraid of him. Of course she is. He made sure of it, the first time they met. Her eyes burn with fear and hatred, and he's crippled and helpless on the floor.

Will she use the sheets, Reno wonders, wound tight around his neck? Maybe something from her room, something solid and heavy. No, he corrects himself, not likely. A psych ward patient won't have anything like that in her room. She might just have to go primal and kick the shit out of him.

What she does is something worse. She turns her back on him and _leaves_.

Stranded and alone, panic wells up and swallows Reno. He yells after her, curses her out. He kicks at the wheelchair with his good leg; it falls over again and the spinning wheels only tighten the sheets that ensnare him. Panting and exhausted and empty, he finally quiets.

As Reno stares up at the ceiling, he sifts through his memory for any fragments of their first encounter. She had appeared out of nowhere, armed with tech none of them had ever seen. Nothing she had said made any sense. After days of interrogation, Reno had declared her a weirdo, albeit an intriguing one, and Tseng had handed her off to the science department. To Hojo.

Fuck. How is she still alive?

The floor is cold, but he can't be bothered to move. The shoulder he landed on throbs faintly in time with his heartbeat. In an hour or two, the painkillers will wear off completely. He should move, get back to his room before that happens.

He can't be bothered.

The main lights flicker on. Reno spits a startled curse, blinking against the sudden brightness. Two nurses, a man and a woman, show up. They shake their heads, tut their disapproval. One disentangles him from the sheets while the other frees and straightens his wheelchair.

Neither seems surprised to find him. The strange woman must have called for help.

The realization shocks him into bewildered silence.

The nurses haul him back to the emergency ward, all the while telling him what an idiot he is. They've got no idea how right they are.

They dump him into bed, turn off the lights, leave. Stunned to his core, Reno continues his staring match with the ceiling in the dark.

_She_ called for help. For _him_.

That night, he stares up at the ceiling for a long time.

* * *

The next day, Reno returns to the psych ward. He finds her in the lounge, staring at the TV with dead eyes. She ignores his every attempt at conversation, until he can't take any more of her hollow stare.

Back in his hospital room, the moans and sobs of other patients haunt Reno's every waking moment. At night, it's his dreams. The strange woman from the psych ward is there, trapped on the collapsing platform, screaming with the plate as he drags her down with him to their doom.

It's coming back to him, bit by bit. He remembers the spit and fire she hurled at him during the interrogations he put her through. She never admitted to anything; he remembers that, too. They never found proof of any wrongdoing, either.

And yet he took that fire of hers and smothered it, until she was as dead inside as those poor bastards under Sector 7.

Reno's stomach turns, and for a moment he's sure he's going to be sick.

_No_. There was life in her eyes, just before she walked away from him in that corridor. They fucking _burned_.

He brought her back to life once already. He can do it again.

So Reno returns to the strange woman in the psych ward. He tells her jokes and funny stories. He taunts, he teases. He sneaks paperclips from the charts and papers that are left within his reach, just so he can throw them at her. Anything to spark some life into that dead-eyed face of hers.

When he prods her about Hojo, he discovers a weak spot at last. She yells at him, curses at him, thoroughly loses her shit. Reno has to try his damnedest not to smile, because her eyes ignite when she rages. She's so _angry_, so _alive_, and it's fucking _beautiful_.

Then she breaks, and each tear that rolls down her cheeks rains straight down into the pit Reno wallows in and fills it until he's sure he's going to drown.

He found a weak spot, all right. And he vows to never use it again.

After that, something changes. She's still wary, because she isn't stupid, but she begins to respond to his questions. Sometimes, she asks her own. He doesn't always tell the truth. Sometimes he lies out of calculation, to test her reactions. She must have ended up in Shinra's interrogation room for a reason. Other times he lies out of habit, like when she asks why he showed up in her ward that night. He spins some excuse about wanting one of those blankets he got tangled up in, because nobody needs to know that particular truth about him.

When she brings up Sector 7, he can't even manage to dissemble. He changes the subject, too damned abruptly, but she's too timid to push. Probably his doing, that. She was far from timid the first time they met.

A very few times, she speaks about her past. He listens, carefully. Her mind seems lucid, her memories too consistent to be lies. He picks apart every detail in the quiet hours of the night, yet he's never able to poke any holes in her story, the way she tells it. If anything, it fills in the gaps in _Shinra's_ version of events.

It's crazy. It's unthinkable. But there are many crazy, unthinkable things hidden away within the walls of Shinra HQ. Maybe, just _maybe_… her story could prove to be true. The thought of it makes Reno lightheaded.

* * *

The cast on Reno's leg comes off weeks ahead of schedule, and the doctor seals the deal with a belated Cure. It's not normal procedure, she explains apologetically. The bones won't fuse completely so late in the healing process, but it should be good enough to allow him to return to work.

Reno nods listlessly. He's heard the speech before. She tells him to be careful and to rest as much as possible, and he nods again. It's what she wants to see, even though they both know it's not how things are going to play out. If he had time for recovery, she wouldn't be bringing him back into the field so soon.

The cure drains his half-healed body. He sleeps the rest of the day and a good ways through the night.

He wakes up tired nonetheless.

The weight and drape of the suit feels strange after all those days in hospital pajamas. His leg feels wrong, too. Reno keeps most of his weight off it as he makes his way up to Tseng's office.

Tseng has news for him.

"They survived," Reno repeats, his voice as dead as the bodies still buried under that fucking plate.

"Most of them, yes." Tseng sits at his desk, frowning at his steepled fingers. "We have monitored them during your absence. After fleeing Midgar, they headed north to Kalm…"

Tseng keeps talking, but Reno can't hear him anymore over the ringing in his ears. His legs feel unsteady. He wants to blame his barely-knit bones, but his hands are shaking too.

He needs a drink. He needs several fucking drinks, but the pain medication he's on doesn't play nice with alcohol. The doctor gave him a long list of consequences that began with delirium and ended with coma.

Reno thinks long and hard about whether or not that matters to him.

"_Reno_."

With a start, he snaps back to some semblance of attention.

"Are you listening?" Tseng's question isn't unkind.

"Yeah, I'm just– I mean I _wasn't_, but…" Reno groans and rubs his eyes. "Sorry, boss. Still a lil' out of it."

With a sigh, Tseng sinks back in his chair and waves him away.

"Take a break," he says. "Have some coffee."

And Reno obeys, because that's what he's so fucking good at.

A handful of employees sit scattered among the tables of the 61st floor cafeteria. The TV screens are tuned to a news broadcast, panning across an endless expanse of rubble. Reno breaks into a cold sweat.

Officially AVALANCHE is to blame, Tseng has made sure of that; yet as Reno makes his way to the cafeteria counter, he could swear he feels several pairs of eyes bore into his back. Even the smile the girl behind the counter gives him seems like a mask, put in place to hide what she knows.

"Coffee," he rasps.

From the corner of his eye, he sees the TV screen change to an aerial view. He angles his face away, desperately casting around his thoughts for something else to focus on.

He thinks of her. The strange woman in the psych ward.

She talks to him, these days. Sometimes she even smiles.

"On second thought," he tells the girl behind the counter, "make it two."

Reno finds the woman he seeks as soon as he sets foot in the ward. When he offers her the coffee, her eyes light up like he's never seen never before. No coffee on the ward, she has told him. Seeing the unbridled excitement on her face, he believes her.

He wears a grin, jokes around. She smiles, too. She _laughs_, and the sound of her laughter travels all the way down the pit he's stuck in and slinks into the hollow behind his ribs. There it remains, long after he leaves.

* * *

Reno jolts awake, panting, drenched in sweat. Jagged pain stabs through his leg, a searing reminder of bones that were still broken a couple of days ago. He fumbles for the bottle of pills on the chair he's using as a nightstand, rinses down two of them with water. Painkillers, nothing more.

As his breathing calms, he pushes himself to sit up against the headboard. His head lolls forward. His eyes drift shut…

…and he's back on the pillar platform, leaping off the edge, only this time his jump is hopelessly short. He falls and the plate follows, _screaming_ as it rushes down to crush him–

Reno gasps and snaps his eyes open. The pain has mellowed to a dull throb, but his heart is thumping harder than ever. If it keeps this up, it'll fucking burst.

Screw the doctor and her warnings. He needs a goddamn drink already.

He's got just the thing too, tucked away in a kitchen cabinet. Wall Market's favorite rotgut; cheap, illegal, and guaranteed to fuck anyone up.

But when Reno opens the cabinet door, it's the bag of coffee next to the bottle that draws his eye. The memory of laughter tinkles in his ears, at the edge of his hearing.

She's probably hoping for another coffee tomorrow. He promised to bring more, after all.

Reno keeps staring at the coffee. He tries to remember if her eyes crinkle when she smiles. He tries to remember if she has dimples, but the painkillers make everything a little fuzzy. The only way to be sure is to see that smile again.

With a trembling hand, he closes the door.

* * *

In the end, he doesn't bring her coffee. He sneaks her out for lunch at the cafeteria. It dumb, it's reckless, it puts them both in danger – and he doesn't regret a goddamned thing, because she springs to life with such curiosity and delight it makes him forget about his aching leg. She even gives him that smile he's hoping for.

She's still on her guard around him, and he still has no idea where to take it from here, but maybe, this once… he can fix something for a change.

* * *

**A/N**:

Special shoutout to my relentless beta reader, Mr. Stompy.

Thanks for reading!


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